Many On Council Admit To Having Smoked Pot

As the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday gave its final approval to a law that would shut down hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries in the city, several City Council members recalled their own relationships with the drug.

KPCC (89.9 FM) reporter Frank Stoltze queried the representatives today and seemed to find mostly sincere answers about their experience with pot. Tom LaBonge, Herb Wesson, Paul Koretz, Bill Rosendahl, Richard Alarcon, Eric Garcetti all pretty much admitted to using it at one time. Some, like Wesson and Koretz, however, were coy and careful with their words: "I know what weed is," Wesson said. "I went to college in 1969."

Asked if he still smokes, Westside Councilman Rosendahl said, "That's a private matter."

Council members Jan Perry, Janice Hahn, Dennis Zine, Bernard Parks and Greig Smith all said they had never tried pot. Councilman Ed Reyes and Paul Krekorian did not respond. Hahn, whose father was a larger-than-life politician, late County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, when she was growing up, said she was warned against weed.

"My father said, "Don't do anything that you don't want to see on the front page of the L.A. Times tomorrow,'" she told KPCC. "So I grew up afraid that I would embarrass my father."

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